CUNY Academic Commons

Boone is correct on all points.

In my opinion, there isn't much utility in offering a "delete all forum replies in this thread" button. I do see some utility in offering a bulk-delete replies option due to spam, but that would probably be the only reason why you'd want to use this option.

If the City College OER group will use this option multiple times a year, we could probably build a WP-CLI script and run it whenever they ask. Or we could add an option under a group's "Manage > Forum" page, but only for this specific group as I do not see other groups using this option.

A secondary approach would be to allow group admins and moderators to view the "Replies" page in the WP admin dashboard and ensuring they can bulk-delete replies that they should have access to there. This feels more inline with what we would expect from users with the editor role in the WP admin dashboard. I'm not sure what the technical lift would be though.

Laurie, can you please say more about this?

I do not believe cloning will not work here because they would like to keep the URL the same.

I'm not sure I understand why they don't just clone the group and use a new one each time if they are going to delete the old replies anyway.

Hi All,

Thanks for your feedback on this.

Matt, their fellowship site menu (https://citycollegeoer.commons.gc.cuny.edu/) links directly into each forum topic "assignment". If they were to clone/change the group, they would have to update the site menu every semester. I asked about doing this and they said they would really prefer to use the same group each semester. I can circle back and ask again if you think this is more appropriate.

However, I do think that Ray's suggestions - either building WP-CLI script or adding an option under a group's "Manage > Forum" page for this specific group - is what they are looking for. Would one of these solutions be possible and an easy technical lift? Since this is a one-off question, I don't want you all to have to do something too complicated to accommodate this use case.

Thanks!

However, I do think that Ray's suggestions - either building WP-CLI script or adding an option under a group's "Manage > Forum" page for this specific group - is what they are looking for. Would one of these solutions be possible and an easy technical lift? Since this is a one-off question, I don't want you all to have to do something too complicated to accommodate this use case.

It's not overly difficult to build. But if (a) they need it to be run frequently, or (b) lots of other groups start asking for similar things, then it could end up being too much overhead for our team. I leave it up to you and Matt whether it's worth it.

Just an update: I have circled back to the City OER team about using a new group each semester instead of developing this bulk delete feature (both as a way to ease this process, and as a way to preserve faculty work and community building space). Waiting to hear back from them.

Laurie, did you ever hear back? I'm wondering if we can close this out.

Sorry for the delay on circling back to this.

I never heard back from them and have continually tried to steer them towards cloning the group to preserve faculty work. From what I can tell, there seems to be a disconnect on their end about processes for archiving this information.

I don't think we want to develop a feature to bulk deleting work when there are simpler means - cloning, new groups - to achieve these ends.